Latest news about upcoming price increase at Shapeways

[RAIL N SCALE]

Latest news about upcoming price increase at Shapeways

On Monday, April 29, 2019, Shapeways will be releasing a new pricing formula for FUD/FXD materials. As a consequence the majority of our kits offered at Shapeways will be more expensive. The typical price increase will be about +10% to +35%. Due to the new pricing algorythm smaller items (everything that has a sales price of $ 8 or less) will face an even bigger price increase (up to + 70%).

- So if you are interested in one of the kits offered at Shapeways you should not wait any longer! Expect high traffic at Shapeways' website just before April 29th.

Please note: The prices of our N-scale kits offered at DM-Toys will not change.

Sincerely,
Maurice

[Jbub]

Sounds like it's time to buy a photon. Anyone willing to sell their 3D models for private use with a small amount of personal prints?

[Chris333]

I think they lost a ton of customers with that last price increase.

[C855B]

Sounds like it's time to buy a photon. ...

That was my first thought, and has been my thinking given the Photon's big improvement in quality (and possibly consistency) over FXD. Problem we non-CAD-types have is most of the "value" of SW output to us is in the digital artwork, not the process. I think the end game is going to be sales of art files to print on your personal Photon, the challenge there is the big devaluation of the intellectual product due to the proliferation of shareware/freeware artwork.

I think they lost a ton of customers with that last price increase.

For serious artists and modelers, IMO the loss of SW business is more the result of availability of affordable resin machines. We went through a very similar evolution in the high-res 2D world, where the 2D output businesses I ran were displaced by user-owned output devices as the quality improved.

[Chris333]

For me it wasn't only that home 3D printing became affordable or high-res. It was that along with the Shapeways price increases their turn around time more than tripled with some orders taking over a month. And the shipping increase. And the "hey slip us a little something extra on the side and we'll pretend we're in a hurry with your order".

[mmagliaro]

Well it doesn't help that Shapeways still has the most useless search facility ever, after being on the web for TEN years.  They have lost a ton of potential business from me (and I'm sure I'm not alone) because after a few minutes, I just throw up my hands in frustration trying to search for something I want.

[thomasjmdavis]

Well it doesn't help that Shapeways still has the most useless search facility ever, after being on the web for TEN years.  They have lost a ton of potential business from me (and I'm sure I'm not alone) because after a few minutes, I just throw up my hands in frustration trying to search for something I want.

+1
Also, the only model supplier I have that has no ability to let me know about new stuff THAT I MIGHT ACTUALLY WANT.... 100s of emails about this and that piece of absolutely useless plastic jewelry or "sculpture", not a single "look at this new passenger car part from the folks you bought from last month."  Luckily, several of the designers participate here or on other forums- otherwise I would not know they exist.

And as Max said- "the most useless search facility ever"- sometimes I can't find the stuff I found last week-

[tehachapifan]

I believe you still need to type "and" in between every search word to get the search to bring up what you're looking for. Like if you're looking for an N scale (loco) shell, I believe you would need to type "N and scale and shell." Why it's (still?) set up that way I don't know.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Didn't they JUST do this?

C'mon Shapeways. Figure it out.

[Jbub]

Didn't they JUST do this?

C'mon Shapeways. Figure it out.

They did. They lost revenue from it so the only logical thing to do is to raise rates again and drive more clientele away.

[mmagliaro]

I believe you still need to type "and" in between every search word to get the search to bring up what you're looking for. Like if you're looking for an N scale (loco) shell, I believe you would need to type "N and scale and shell." Why it's (still?) set up that way I don't know.

This does help, but not enough.

I have no qualms with using the logic words.  Heck, we got used to them 20 years ago in web search engines, so who cares?  As long as they work.   

But they only "sort of" work.  For example,
if I search just for   northern pacific ,   I get 1611 hits, most of which only have one of those words in their title, but the results do include some Northern Pacific engine cabs and other items that *definitely* have both terms in their title.  If I then search for     northern and pacific,  I get only 11 hits and ALL the engine parts whose titles matched both words are gone.

It also can't handle quoted literal strings for beans.  If I search for "SP&S" in quotes, I get 1498 results, none of which seem to have that in their title.   

It would seem to me that the ability to accurately and quickly search for products would be a paramount driver for their business, but somehow, they have survived just fine without this.  I'm amazed.

[wazzou]

It would seem to me that the ability to accurately and quickly search for products would be a paramount driver for their business, but somehow, they have survived just fine without this.  I'm amazed.

No sh!t.  I Completely agree.

[ljudice]

I check for MOW models on Shapeways every month or so and there hasn't been a new model posted in many months.  Raymodels who does nice track machines pulled off SW and is investing in his own printer.

Shapeways and Etsy are owned by the same people - I think objets' de art and jewelery is theor target market.

[C855B]

... Shapeways and Etsy are owned by the same people - I think objets' de art and jewelry is their target market.

Ah! I wasn't aware of that. Yep... with that particular intel I'll take it so far as to suggest their pricing revisions are specifically to discourage modelers. We're a lot of trouble, frankly, requiring fine detail, dimensional accuracy and defect-free output. Art, especially organic forms, is "never perfect", and there's much more built-in tolerance.

I know this firsthand, my wife is a mixed-media artist and we tend to hang with artists. The buzzphrase around the group is, "True artists know when to stop."

[Maletrain]

...  The buzzphrase around the group is, "True artists know when to stop."

Depends on your definition of "artist".   Some, that I will label "water color types" want to make you use your imagination to see what they want you to see in their products.  Others are more "photographic types" that strive to make the product as faithful an image of reality as possible.  Both types can be artists (or just wanna bees).  And, don't get me into the "abstract" and "impressionist" types, who seem to want you to see whatever their "art pieces" make you think of - I guess I would lump those together as the "Rorschach types".

Anyway, in model railroading, we see both "water color" and "photographic" types, and some conflicts among them. So,while there is plenty of content to the admonition that "True artists know when to stop", that is often misinterpreted by lesser artists who think it means that they are "true artists" when they make "slop".

[Did I drift this into the Crew Lounge?]